Page 58 of Hell to Pay

“That works for me,” Ben said.

“They initially made it,” I said, “with donkey’s milk.”

“Gross,” he said, absolutely predictably. “But I bet they don’t do that anymore.” And headed off to find out.

27

WE GO ON

We drove to Chemnitz. It didn’t even take an hour on the Autobahn.

“It took us two days to get to Chemnitz,” I told the others. “The helpful soldier had told me that I could request a lift from any military vehicle headed in our direction, so we had high hopes of at least getting to a train station that was still operational. Perhaps the lift would have been forthcoming a week earlier, but now?” I shook my head. “Oh, there were military vehicles, all right. Trucks carrying troops on benches, supply columns. They were almost all headed east, though, to the front. “More lambs to the slaughter,” Dr. Becker said, as we trudged along with our rucksacks. I asked, “Can you still pity them, then?” and he said, “At times. At least in the abstract.”

It had been cold that day, and cloudy, too, or perhaps that was the smoke that still hung in the air. It felt as if I’d never get thestink of it out of my nostrils. At first we looked back often, hoping for that lift, but after an hour or so, we gave it up.

We were only four in a stream of refugees. The lucky ones walked beside wagons pulled by a horse or perhaps a donkey, their belongings piled high on their carts, or pushed three-wheeled handcarts or wheelbarrows before them. Most, though, trudged along with their bundles and parcels, with suitcases that they switched from hand to hand. Nobody, it seemed, knew any more than we did, and when the time for lunch came and went, we were walking still.

At last, we came to a crossing. A tiny road only, with no signpost. Dr. Becker said, “We’ll turn to the north here.”

“Why?” I asked. “It means going out of our way.”

“There’s a village down here,” he said. “Cossmannsdorf. I used to have a patient there. He sometimes paid me in vegetables.”

I stopped where I was. “But that’s too dangerous.”

He said, “We must find something to eat. Water, too. I probably won’t even see him.”

I had no answer to that, so we turned and walked on. The road wound uphill, the wind blew, and our steps grew weary. I was very thirsty. We had one flask that we’d filled with water before we’d left, but the water was gone.

It took four hours in all to reach the town. When we passed the first few houses, I said, “They’re still standing.”

“Yes,” Dr. Becker said. “The Allies don’t bother bombing the villages. Unless, of course, they miss.” Which wasn’t exactly hopeful, this close to Dresden.

We kept on, and finally reached aGasthaus,an inn. It seemed to be the only public building in the village. We went inside and found a tiny room with a few well-scrubbed wooden tables, and a plump woman—how few plump women one saw anymore!—scolding a boy, saying, “I don’t care if theHitler Youth are holding ten exercises. You need to fill the woodbox before you go.”

Dr. Becker waited, and when she was finished and the boy had trudged out, red to the tips of his ears. asked, “May we get lunch here?”

She spread her arms wide. “Do I look as if I have lunch? Do you see anybody eating it?”

“No,” Dr. Becker said. “But I hoped. The children are hungry and thirsty, you see. Water, perhaps?”

“We have ration coupons,” I put in. “And money.”

She heaved a gusty sigh. “Sit down, then. I have soup and a bit of bread. You can have that.”

The soup, when it came, was made of potatoes and cabbage, and the bread was made, surely, of wheat and rye. We fell on the food with gratitude and were sorry when it was gone, and when I offered payment, the woman waved me away, saying, “It’s little enough I can do. Do you come from Dresden, then, or farther east?”

“From Dresden,” I said.

“It was very bad, we hear,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “It was as bad as you’ve heard.”

She looked at me more closely. “Did you lose people, then?”

I had to swallow. “Yes. My father and mother and the—our friends. My uncle and his children found me, though, and we are together now, you see.”

“Family is always better,” she said, and I agreed. How to explain that the Beckershadalready begun to feel like my family? One clings to what one has, and I didn’t want to think about my parents. I’d buried that pain deep inside. I couldn’t afford it now.